


Scars

by Moreena



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Depression, Heavy Angst, M/M, Post-Endless Waltz, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-12
Updated: 2016-12-12
Packaged: 2018-09-08 05:29:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8832253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moreena/pseuds/Moreena
Summary: Quatre's demons are taking over his life, wearing down his resolve and his mental walls.  He's distanced himself from his friends, because he's too frightened that he might drag them down with him.  Will someone notice in time, to help pull him out of the hole he's dug himself into?





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted something angst heavy. I'm not sure when I'll work on the next chapter. Tags will change/update as the story moves along. It will (hopefully) have a bittersweet or happy-ish ending. I make no promises though!!

The war was over. For real, this time. There wasn’t a false sense of security, that niggling worm of doubt in the back of his mind that they’d be needed again. They could hang up their space suits and try to pick up pieces of a normal life and sew them together with gossamer threads of strength forged from war. Despite their radically different upbringings, they all managed. He’d thought that Heero would have had the most issue acclimating to civilian life, but he’d done it with blinding brilliance.

He kept in touch, because it was what he wanted and needed to do. He needed to know that they were all alright, and getting by. He wanted to know how they were doing, because it was a spark of brightness in the bland and colorless monotony that was his own life.

Heero had gone off to follow Relena, working as the head of her security. While the universe was at peace, there were still radicals buried deep in the woodworks of society. And, Relena was a prime target for them. She represented hope and a new future. A new future that not everyone wanted to accept and embrace. When he was needed, he assisted with Preventers, putting out larger fires, and lending technical support. He was one of the best with a computer after all. Their vid-calls were always quiet, almost serene, in a sense. They chatted amicably, about news, current things. Heero always had a group or individuals that Quatre needed to put on his watch list, and Quatre always thanked Heero for looking out for him. Quatre tried to not bore him with the details of business, even when Heero asked.

Calls with Duo were a whirlwind of mental chaos, which Quatre supposed came from running a scrapyard. Duo would get distracted mid-sentence to shout something at Hilde. She’d yell back and they’d bicker like an old married couple. Though Quatre knew that the only one who called Duo more than he did was Heero. He was happy for them, though distance sometimes made it hard. Heero did try to stop in when Relena was in the area. Those calls always left Quatre slightly flushed, because he and Duo were best friends. And, Duo had no qualms about over sharing every gritty, sexual detail with his blonde comrade. Quatre indulged him, because it was what friends were for. They’d languish over running businesses together, and the pitfalls of being adults. Sometimes, all of that would happen in one conversation. Quatre always needed a strong cup of coffee after expending so much energy with chatting up Duo.

Wufei was probably almost as busy as he was. Preventers was still a fledgling agency in many ways, and had to avoid the pitfalls of other post-war organizations. He was Une’s right hand man, and best full time agent. Sometimes he was away and undercover. Other times he was just on a mission, or training. There were so many hats that he wore, Quatre sometimes had a difficult time keeping them straight, and that was saying something. But, when they did get time to talk, it was an intellectual’s dream. They talked of politics, of theories. Sometimes they reminisced about the past, and their friends. They engaged and challenged each other, a verbal chess match to keep both their minds sharp. Usually, their calls were late at night, given the time difference between them. But, Quatre would sit at his desk with a cup of tea to keep him awake, because he loved talking with Wufei and hearing the latest dramatic tale of which new recruit had ruined something, leaving Une and Wufei to smooth it over so it wasn’t a political disaster.

Phone calls with Trowa were the hardest. It wasn’t for lack of things to talk about. No, it was for the unrequited feelings Quatre had for the tall brunette. He’d never said anything, just held that torch aloft silently, feeling his heart shatter piece by piece each time they talked. He was busy with Cathy and the circus, touring the Earth and the colonies. While it would seem they didn’t have things to talk about, they found topics. Quatre would ask about the lions, about Cathy, and some of the frequent guests of Trowa’s stories. Trowa would ask how he was holding up, what he was up to. He always seemed genuinely interested in Quatre’s lasts business ventures, or his newest cause that he’d taken up with Relena in the political sphere. It was the looks that Trowa gave him that made it hard to talk with him every time. There was this subtle longing and yearning in his eyes and face, that neither of them mentioned. He could feel that it caused Trowa to question, that it ate away at him, like water eroding at a rock in the ocean. When they hung up, Quatre always felt empty and broken, like he’d scraped all of his insides out with a spoon and left himself hollow. He couldn’t tell if it was his own feeling, or if he was picking up things from Trowa.

They were all successful. Happy. They were all happy, except for him. Oh, he’d long ago mastered wearing a mask. He’d been doing it since he was a child, when his father had begun grooming him to take on the family name. Quatre had been forced to hide away his true self when out in public and in front of his father. His mask was well worn, a comfort in times of need. With it on, he was the unfailing Winner heir. The world at his feet, should he chose to want it to fall there. He was humble, and wanted nothing of the sort. Maybe he wanted a certain someone to fall at his feet, to pick them back up to walk beside him. The mask had never failed him, even in his time away at war. Yes, when he spoke, when he convinced them all to fight, led them in battle, or emboldened millions with his political speeches, he was speaking from his heart. For the good of mankind. But, the smiles barely reached his eyes, and it drained him to wear it day in and day out, with no respite in sight.

No one he talked with now, save his sisters, knew who he was before the mask had been erected. Not even his fellow pilots knew the true him, though the closest he’d been was with the whole Zero system debacle. That had been a true test of his character, and just how strong and deep the mask’s roots went into his very being. In truth, he didn’t know how to leave the mask. He didn’t know how to lock it away and stop using it. Because it had never failed him, he was afraid. Afraid of letting people see who he really was, and just what the war had done to him. Quatre was frightened to reveal the monster he knew he was, deep down in his heart of hearts. It was why he threw himself into post-war causes. Why he donated money, why he supported Relena in her efforts. To hide the truth.

Quatre Winner was nothing more than a monster inside a human skin, and his humanity was slowly slipping away from him the tighter he tried to grasp at it.

 

It had begun slowly, like all things. In fact, he’d never noticed it at first. It had been there, buried deep down inside of him. It had been the edge the Zero system had needed to plant roots in his head, and manipulate him. Making him kill so many innocents. It had made him… Yes, Trowa had stopped him, had managed to kick the system from his head with his sacrifice, but the seeds of the monster had finally sprouted with the fertilizer the system had left in his brain. Like a perverse garden of poisonous plants, his brain was a minefield. It was one thing for him to kill soldiers that he was fighting against in the war. But, innocent lives were another matter entirely.

He didn’t share the complete pacifist views of his father, but senseless slaughter was something he was morally against. Quatre had broken his own moral code, and he didn’t know how to find his way back from it. Heero understood, from what Quatre had learned when they’d spent time together in Sanq, but how did one compare? Heero was conditioned, had a mission. Managed to compartmentalize the entire thing and work through it, because he was a soldier. Quatre was a civilian turned fighter. He wasn’t able to just bounce back from it. Yes, they had both killed nameless civilians, but Quatre was the one that had taken out his friend. His comrade. The man he knew, in the deepest recesses of his heart, that he was in love with. It weighed on his heart and mind heavier than a planet with excessive gravity.

As the years since the war rolled past, Quatre found himself…. He found himself lost. Only three years since the Mariemaia incident had been handled, still all Quatre could see was the lasting damage the war had reaped. Destroyed colonies, colonies that needed massive repairs and overhauls from battles being fought. Debris from OZ or the Alliance roaming through space. It was senseless, and it took its toll on him. Orphans by the hundreds, all victims of circumstance. Born at the wrong time, left to suffer the consequences of adults they never knew. Their lives ripped from them just as cruelly as it had been from the five Gundam pilots. 

Some said that suffering built character. Was good for the soul and the spine. Quatre wished he could hang the one that had said it. Needless suffering was impractical. Useless, and only helped to perpetuate the endless cycle of anger, revolt, war, and peace. A dance that never had an end, just a change in music. 

Quatre wanted to ease the suffering. Help correct the things he’d done wrong in the war. The only way he truly could. From throwing money at charities, to campaigning with Relena for reform and change. To attempt to bring the rest of the universe into the belief that war was needless. The destruction and suffering… Quatre took it upon his shoulders to work himself into the ground. When he was busy, that vile poison in his head was subdued. As close to silent as he could make it. When he was running WEI, and attending functions, he could drown it out. Drown out the voices that said it was his fault. That he’d done all of this, single-handedly. Rationally, he knew it wasn’t. He’d joined the fight to protect life, to preserve humanity, and his actions had been tied directly to the things other, more intelligent men had done.

Political rallies, charity dances and auctions. Board meetings, tours of facilities. He barely had time to sleep and to eat. But, for the first time, that void inside him was pacified, to an extent. As time rolled on, it started to not work. The roaring in his own head started to overwhelm him. To distract him and dehumanize him. His mind told him that despite his best war relief efforts, it was all for naught. No amount of commendable work would redeem his soul from everything he had done. Nothing would wipe out the balance of red in his past, and it would haunt him forever.

When the voices couldn’t be drowned out, he eased on calling his friends. While any one of them would have been willing to chat with him, help him see that he was just being irrational, Quatre knew that it was more than that. It wasn’t just him being irrational, there was something truly wrong with him. He didn’t know if any of them had run into a conundrum like this since the war. Even if they had, they all had support systems. Heero had Relena and Duo. Duo had Heero, Hilde, and Howard, in some abstract way. Wufei had Une and Sally. Trowa had Cathy. Quatre had no one. No one he was close to that was here, that he could talk to, spend the night sitting on the couch just voicing his fears and shortcomings. Yes, he had sisters, but half of them could care less about him, and they were all far away, removed from where he was. Not that any of them would understand. Most of them were spoiled, would tell him that he was just being a child who needed to grow up. Or that he’d earned whatever mess he was in, because he’d been the one to run off to war, against their father’s wishes. His friends had their own lives, and didn’t need to be burdened with his petty issues.

Bi-monthly vid-calls turned into once a month regular phone calls. It was easier for Quatre to fake that he was fine if he didn’t have to show them his face. They were all masters at reading body language and facial expressions. While his mask was almost flawless, given his mental state, Quatre didn’t dare trust it to fool his friends. The media and the universe were easier to fool, of course. All they cared about were his words and if he could rally people to his cause. No, with just his voice it was easier to play off his strain. It could be chalked up to being overworked, or the end of a long day. Spoon fed excuses that his friends ate like candy. It was too easy, to be honest.

Of course, the easier they lying got to be, the harder everything else came to be. The dull rumble of voices turned into low level screaming inside his head. They beat at him night and day. He took to sleeping pills just to sleep at night. During the day it was caffeine that saw him through his mental fugue and coming off the pills. They quieted for a time, and he was able to breathe a sigh of relief. The constant torture about how he was useless, how he’d never be forgiven wore on him. It broke him down to the lowest he’d ever been. He hated himself, everything he’d done, and everything he tried to do to rectify his mistakes. Even the love he carried for his friends, and that deeper, more forbidden love for Trowa wasn’t safe. No, he was cursed there as well, to listen and believe that it was all wrong. Bonds forged in death and bloodshed weren’t to be treasured. They meant nothing, because they’d only been brought together through such adversity. 

Those were the nights even the sleeping pills didn’t knock him out right away. Those were the nights he cried into his pillow, cursing himself, wishing that he’d never stepped foot into a Gundam. That everything he’d done had been selfish, and made him wish he’d never been born. If he hadn’t, his father would’ve never needed to look down on him with such disdain, like he was nothing but dirt on the bottom of his shoe. Those were the nights that his corrupted mind nudged at him that it would be so easy. So easy to just snuff his own life out, that sometimes he’d actually entertained the thoughts about it. Despite his upbringing, and knowing full well that suicide was considered a coward’s way out, it seemed so easy. Seemed like it would be the gentlest course of action. People would mourn him, yes. But there were many others out there that could take up his mantle. There were sisters that could run the business, other politicians to fight alongside Relena for causes. Why did he have to torment himself by trying so hard?

The calls stopped altogether once those thoughts became more common. No one needed to speak to Quatre when he was like that. They’d hear the tremble in his voice. They’d sense the hesitation to talk about himself and what he was doing. They would act concerned, tell him he needed to talk to someone besides them. And, who could he go to? Rationally, he knew that he could have talked to Une. She ran a task force of people who were put into life threatening situations, including torture and having to kill people in the name of peace. She had mental health professionals on staff, and wouldn’t even bat an eye at referring Quatre to one, as an offer of mutual aid. If she helped him, she would expect a little something in return. A mission or some financial contribution. Not that Quatre would have been against either option. But, he was a Winner, and the publicity that could come from such a doctor’s visit could ruin him. It was hard enough being so young, and the most influential man in the universe, but the scandal. Though he knew everything would be discreet, the demons in his head were louder.

Emails took the place of the calls. They varied in length, depending on the amount of time in between them. But, he tried to stick to his once a month schedule with a decent sized wall of text. It was even easier to lie over a screen with no sensory contact. He could have been at home, curled in the darkness of his room, tears streaking down his face from his own head, as he typed that he was fine and things were progressing smoothly in his latest venture. Yes, it was just that easy to fool the other men. And, none of them said anything or picked up the phone to call him. That made it easier to continue the farce, but more difficult to control those demons in his head. They were growing stronger each week, and he didn’t know how much longer he could fight them. The sweet oblivion that they offered seemed so attainable and so final. It sounded like bliss compared to what he was being tormented with. Flashes of lives he’d taken, what they could have been if he hadn’t taken an action. For the first time in his life, he wished there was a way to go back in time and reverse everything. If he could, he’d go far enough back to prevent his own existence, and hope with all of his heart that it would change the future.

Quatre managed to escape his friends in a sense. There was no real hiding from them with the life that he led. He was always being broadcast on tv, on the internet. Being in the political realm left him without much privacy, but he had to do it. Though he was loathe to admit it, he’d been using the styling services offered by the press. They didn’t ask questions about why the bags under his eyes were so dark and pronounced, or why his cheeks seemed a little too gaunt for someone his age and weight. They just let a stylist at him, and he or she would fix his hair, apply some makeup artfully and send him on his way, so he wouldn’t be seen on cameras looking like something that had crawled out of a grave, like some rotting zombie from a horror movie. He would look his best, even if he wasn’t at his best. Nothing could bring the light back to his eyes, or erase the tension in his body. Those things were impossible to hide on screen. He only hoped that the other pilots were too busy leading their lives to ever see him on screen. If they never saw him, then his deception was safe, and his secrets were guarded and protected for another day. Like all things though, that ignorance and hope couldn’t last forever.

 

“I’m telling you Heero, there’s something wrong with him. He’s not himself,” Trowa said into the phone, cradling the device between his ear and shoulder.

“I really don’t know why you’re so worried. He seemed fine the last time I caught a glimpse of him,” Heero responded, sounding slightly perturbed.

“Yeah, you caught a glimpse of him. You’re a little busy watching Relena, so my apologies if I doubt your split-second assessment,” Trowa snapped, voice a little angry.

He slammed the spoon he was holding down on the counter, closing his eyes and counting to ten in his head. He picked it back up and resumed stirring his food as he spoke, slightly calmer.

“I know you’re vouching for him Heero, but I can just tell something is wrong. I saw the video of his speech from the ESUN. He was there, but not. Going through the motions.”

Trowa knew what that was like. He’d done it himself. Been nothing but a shambling body going through routines day in and day out. He’d been a child mercenary, and that was the only way to survive. You had to distance yourself so you wouldn’t let your actions rule you. Your brain made a safe space for you while you did your repugnant deeds, and when your day was done, you emerged somewhat safe and sound, and you could sleep at night. Un-haunted by the actions of your day. It was like seeing that, when he’d stared at the screen. Quatre didn’t deserve that fate. Yes, his hands were bloody, but so were the rest of theirs. Quatre was… It didn’t matter. It took him a moment to realize he’d missed what Heero had been saying.

“What?”

“I was talking about the time Wufei chased Duo down after Duo rigged Nataku to play that silly Lambchop song whenever it started up.” Heero replied, implying that he’d known all along that Trowa wasn’t listening.

“What do you intend to do about Quatre?”

Trowa gaped for a moment, slowly stirring the pasta sauce on the stove while he chewed on his words. What did he want to do? Visit? Call? He just wanted to try and erase that face. That vacant, death-like gaze, that screamed out that he was so close to leaping off the edge and attempting something drastic or suicidal.

“I’ve told you before, and I’ll tell you again. There’s nothing wrong with acting on your emotions. If you feel the need to help him, then go help him.” Heero continued, allowing Trowa time to respond.

“Thanks, Heero. I’ll figure something out.”

“If you need his schedule, let me know. I have access.”

“I’ll email you tonight when I have a better plan formulated in my head,” Trowa replied, a subtle curve of his lips the only indication he was happy with the situation, knowing Heero would pick up on it in the sound of his voice.

“Sounds good. Good luck Trowa. And, if you need more help, just let the rest of us know. We all owe Quatre a debt that needs to be repaid.”

With a click, the line went dead. Trowa pulled the phone away from his ear and set it down on the counter, fingers curling into a tight fist. Would he be able to help Quatre? More importantly, would he be too late?


End file.
